Category Archives: Witeden

This is another older puzzle from the collection that doesn’t get solved very often. To be honest, it’s the same as most of them!! One good thing to come from this blog is playing with older puzzles that don’t get used very often!!

As you can see, this on is a shape shifter:

It should be noted that this puzzle is not capped internally, so doesn’t feel very strong or solid – a bit flimsy feeling:

Much the same as others this week, you first reduce this back to the original, cuboid shape and then solve. And therein lies the rub…..

Parities. Or false equivocations.

I would like to say I understand parities a lot more these days. I spent quite a while trying to learn parity algorithms, but they are generally fairly long.

So, after a lot of reading on the Twisty Puzzles forums and lots of YouTube viewing, I think I understand why they happen and ways to solve without long algorithms – Cha Reeves from the twisty puzzle blog/YouTube is a good one for this. He generally only uses a few algorithms to solve pretty much most puzzle you could think of. And normally gets out of parity using a single turn and then resolving (it makes sense – watch some of his videos. See the links page).

So, this is a big culprit for that, but it can be dealt with fairly easily.

Anyway, it’s not a great puzzle – mostly because of the flimsy feel to it and being a bit catchy, but it can be found for not much more than £10 – I think Marty at the puzzle store has it for just over ten pounds plus postage.

Not massively expensive, nt great but a fairly good additions for an introduction to cuboids.

Well, what did you expect? Life would be boring if every cube I told you about was super great and worth buying, wouldn’t it???

I think it’s only fair to tell you good and bad points – this blog may be useful for a beginner building a collection, so subjectivity should be used.

Well, we’ve move out of the realm of “cubic cuboids” and into the cuboid proper territory with this tower block style puzzle.

Ps:

I think this was also a gift (although I can’t remember who from – sorry!).

It was probably one of my first cuboids. With which, came some new learning – the world of 180 degree turns was a new on for me! I didn’t even have a domino cube (still don’t, in fat!!) to learn with.

Fortunately, this one is a nice easy entry in. No shape-shifting, just plain simple solving. And unlike yesterday’s cubic puzzle – the layers are nice and chunky. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before my big hands, so the tiny layers of yesterday’s 3x3x9 make it a lot harder than it should be!!

In honesty, I don’t solve this one very often. I guess because it seems easy? Doesn’t stop me solving a 3×3 most days….

Here we go. Back with the cubic cuboids again. Ps – only 19 more to go….

Anyway. Back to it. This was a Christmas gift (from my sister, I think) – the Amazon wish list is a great thing! I think this was bought through Amazon, but I like the fact that you can bookmark products from other shops into your list as well. Distracted again. Sorry.

Very much the same as yesterday, this is a cuboid puzzle but in a cube shape. The way I solve this one (not sure about others) would be to first orient the layers – pretty much solving it as a 3×3 cube but without worrying about piece placement, just so that the individual layers can then be turned. Then solve the layers as I would a normal cuboid – centre layer first, then basically domino solving each layer working outwards from the centre.
There may be an easier or quicker way to go about it, but that’s the way I do it and I’m quite happy with it!!

It’s a very nicely made puzzle. Solid, sturdy, turns well with nice stickers.

A quick search shows these to be around £15. Not a bad price for a nice puzzle. There are different versions of this available – roadblocks (I think). The variation comes with the top and bottom centres also having three thin layers instead of the solid block on this one. I guess, just adding one more step to the solve.

Anyway, nice puzzle. Not too tricky if you’re just getting in to cuboids. Give it a whirl!